Paperwork stalls cleanup process

This house at the intersection of Tulsa and Homes was dry Saturday afternoon as the waters began to flood the East Side, but an additional four feet of water poured in overnight from the Duncan St. Canal.

A colorful house on Tulsa is half filled with water on Sunday, July 1, 2007.

It's been a year since the flood first rocked North Texas last June.

But 12 months after the Wichita River rose to a record height, spilling water quickly across the countryside, many signs of the flood's destruction still remain.

In the East Side of Wichita Falls, close to 40 homes are on the demolition list. In Wichita County, three homes in the Wranglers Retreat neighborhood are also waiting on a date with a bulldozer.

But before these flood-ravaged properties can be cleared, both the city and county must ensure they have mountains of paperwork approved by the Federal Emergency Management Agency first.

It's been a yearlong waiting game. And counting.

City and county officials said they are aggravated by the slow crawl of progress.

"These buildings are open, they are empty, they are vandalized, and they've been sitting there for a year," said Dave Clark, director of community development for the city of Wichita Falls, about the flood-damaged buildings on the East Side. "We're tremendously frustrated with the process, but it does appear to be close to resolution. We have needed approval of our mitigation action plan, which was submitted in 2006. Since then, we've been going back and forth, trying to get this resolved."

Clark said the city has been continually making revisions to its submitted plan in response to queries from both FEMA and the Governor's Office of Emergency Management.

The Wichita Falls City Council is set to adopt the plan at today's meeting, provided the plan is first given the greenlight from FEMA, Clark said.

Clark said he hopes purchasing and then demolishing the properties can begin soon after.

"We have been provided some assurance, but not in writing yet, that we are likely then to get our funding to, at long last, resolve the worst case issues," Clark said.

These"worst case issues" were homes that sustained more than 50 percent damage that lie in the floodplain. Because of floodplain regulations, these homes must either be raised to one foot above the floodplain, moved to higher ground or demolished.

Since the flood, three of the significantly damaged structures have been raised by the homeowners, Clark said. One has been torn down.

That leaves a total of 38 homes that the city plans to purchase and then demolish, once all the paperwork with state and federal agencies is in order, he said.

In Wichita County, three homes in Wranglers Retreat notched the above 50 percent damage mark, according to County Judge Woody Gossom.

It's been a waiting game for the county, just like the city, as paperwork shuffles from Wichita Falls to Austin to Washington and back again, many times over.

Gossom said he's extremely frustrated by the whole process, especially how waiting on the government has severely inconvenienced homeowners.

"People have been out of their homes for a year waiting on this to get done. It's just ridiculous," he said. "I just feel for them. It's just terrible."

The county is one step ahead of the city, though, since its mitigation action plan was approved back in 2004.

"We're still in the waiting game, but we're in the second part of it," Gossom said. "We have been approved for the FEMA for buyout."

The FEMA mitigation program provides the county with 75 percent of the funds to buy out property owners. Currently, the county is waiting on word from the Office of Rural Community Affairs about a grant the county applied for to cover the remaining 25 percent of the cost.

"I'm going to hope that we hear something back on that just anytime soon," Gossom said.

Gossom said he was thankful that the county had the foresight to get its mitigation plan approved several years ago.

"The big thing that's hurting the city right now is that they didn't have their plan approved," he said. "We hired a consultant and did our three years or so ago, and that turned out to be a wise move because it made us eligible without having to jump a lot of huge hurdles."

Wichita County Emergency Management Coordinator Lee Bourgoin said he is hopeful that the wait will soon be over. But of course, he has no assurances that the process will be resolved quickly.

"We're just waiting," he said. "I couldn't even venture a guess (when the wait will be over). There's some speculation that we might be able to get it settled by end of summer, but who knows."

Bourgoin said he was surprised with the FEMA time lag, based on his year's of experience with dealing with the organization.

"In my job, I deal with FEMA all the time, and I'm not al all surprised," he said. "This is just the normal process of the federal government. You can't hurry them up. They don't do that. The best thing is to just wait them out."